The taste of Home
Aug. 19th, 2010 10:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
primsongDiscovering a small European deli near my daughter's dance class, I wandered over to explore and pass the time - wonderful little shop, stuffed top to bottom with goods from Bulgaria and Turkey mostly, but plenty of other fun stuff as well. I asked the proprietor what he considered to be the taste of 'home' - what did he associate with regular home cooking when he was a kid, and he directed me to jars of lutenica, a sweet and spicy veggie relish.
"Every year, all the houses, you have all the grandmother, aunts, mothers, everyone comes together and makes this," he said with a faraway and happy look that told me I was on the right track. "You put it on everything, I sometimes start eating a jar of this, just dipping in crackers and cannot stop! Everybody's mother, they all have their own recipe, you know how it is, but yes, yes. This is good, you find this in the country."
I took a big jar home and by golly, he's right - hard to stop when you start dipping in crackers or celery sticks or whatever... we put some on pasta too, mm. I can picture children in Bulgaria, maybe on a small farm, sniffing the air and being sent to bring in more veggies to wash and slice for the aunties - or opening that bright jar later in the cold months and tasting the warm black pepper and sweetness after a long day of chores and school.
But it made me think - if someone from some other part of the world were to ask, what tastes like "home" to you? What do you remember everyone having, making, preserving? Not just common condiments (ketchup), but what was home-made and no one made it quite like (insert loved relative here)?
I had to conclude for me it might be apple crisp or possibly the thick oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips - both from the hands of my grandmother, my mother and now myself. Cinnamon and apple and oatmeal, with a touch of chocolate - that would be 'home'.
What would be the taste of your Home?
"Every year, all the houses, you have all the grandmother, aunts, mothers, everyone comes together and makes this," he said with a faraway and happy look that told me I was on the right track. "You put it on everything, I sometimes start eating a jar of this, just dipping in crackers and cannot stop! Everybody's mother, they all have their own recipe, you know how it is, but yes, yes. This is good, you find this in the country."
I took a big jar home and by golly, he's right - hard to stop when you start dipping in crackers or celery sticks or whatever... we put some on pasta too, mm. I can picture children in Bulgaria, maybe on a small farm, sniffing the air and being sent to bring in more veggies to wash and slice for the aunties - or opening that bright jar later in the cold months and tasting the warm black pepper and sweetness after a long day of chores and school.
But it made me think - if someone from some other part of the world were to ask, what tastes like "home" to you? What do you remember everyone having, making, preserving? Not just common condiments (ketchup), but what was home-made and no one made it quite like (insert loved relative here)?
I had to conclude for me it might be apple crisp or possibly the thick oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips - both from the hands of my grandmother, my mother and now myself. Cinnamon and apple and oatmeal, with a touch of chocolate - that would be 'home'.
What would be the taste of your Home?
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Date: 2010-08-19 07:17 pm (UTC)PS
Date: 2010-08-19 08:50 pm (UTC)Re: PS
Date: 2010-08-20 12:50 am (UTC)